Ghana Community Development Internship (short-term)
Gain invaluable skills related to intercultural competency, advanced communication and leadership, to set you apart and boost your resume and career development. GVI’s short term community development internships are perfect for gender studies majors, budding lawyers, social workers, psychologists, educators, career breakers or anyone wanting to make a sustainable difference abroad. Expect to be pushed outside your comfort zones, to learn new skills, and make use of your theoretical, classroom based training in a new way.


Program Focus
A typical day on this internship will include working with local community schools with early years students, supporting in the class room, designing extra-curricular activities, or conducting vocational training workshops covering topics like healthcare, gender equality, or professional skills development. From Monday to Friday you will work on the internship projects and weekends are yours to explore the surrounding area or simply relax at base with your fellow interns.

Projects are varied and will be decided by assessing the needs on the ground at the time. Typical project activities might include designing and delivering arts and crafts sessions with kindergarten and junior school students, coordinating computing skills workshops with women from the local community, and delivering presentations on professional skills, healthcare, gender equality or international development to community members and GVI partners. All GVI internships are geared at developing your leadership skills and allowing you to develop a variety of key soft and hard skills that will put you a step ahead of the pack.


Location
Equatorial Ghana is known for its coastal landscape of palm-lined beaches, magnificent lakes and rivers surrounded by fecund tropical forests teeming with butterfly life, birds and Mona monkeys swinging through the treetops. Ghana, located in a subregion of West Africa, also has a rich cultural heritage stretching far into the early medieval ages, and it is here that we aim to support communities in their efforts to improve the quality of basic education offered at schools and provide women with the support they need to become more financially independent and socially empowered.

GVI volunteers will be living and working in at our base in Kokrobite, a small village on the outskirts of the capital of Accra, where many of the local community are sustained by fishing. Here we work with various stakeholders including governmental organisations, local NGOs, schools, and women’s rights groups to create a platform for international volunteers to contribute to local sustainable development projects that assist these organisations to achieve their goals.

In your free time, take a walk around a nearby market to try on kente garments, known by the people of Ghana as ‘the cloth of kings’, or browes the bead and jewellery stalls. You can also explore the forts from the colonial era or sample Ghanaian delicacies like freshly roasted plantains, while enjoying the rhythms of local musicians and basking in the sun.


Program Highlights

• Contribute towards meaningful and sustainable community development initiatives in West Africa.
• "Earn your GVI ILM Leadership Development certificate, a qualification recognised by the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM).
• Gain hands-on experience in community education, gender studies or international development to boost your resume.
• Meet participants from across the world, developing your cross cultural skills.
• Explore all that Ghana has to offer, and be immersed in the Ghanaian culture.

If applying for this program to obtain credit from an institution, GVI can supply learning outcomes and support in the application.

For more information, check out our video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_P4ViI2D48